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PINDRIFT 



By James L. McLane, Jr. 




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SPINDRIFT 



SPINDRIFT 



BY 



J. L. McLANE, Jr. 

Author of "Driftwood" 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 

1920 



t^Mi 






- 



Copyright, 1920, by 
The Four Seas Company 



The Four Seas Press 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



^l, 2~ 1920 

©CI.A604562 



*w^ *v- 



TO 
CHARLES MACVEAGH Jr. 



vuv Se 6ava)v Xaputecs "EaiueQog ev (p6t[Asvot?. 



Oh no more dead than the unsleeping stars, 

The music of your lips shall sing for ever, 
Beauty exalted, and your love wane never, 

Though year by year the lustre of the moon 
Wither, and Spring go from us all too soon; 

Yet shall Time's fingers twist Love's binding 
bars 
Closer about our hearts, for your mute breath 

Has stirred to song the silences of Death. 
You were the moon of all our devious ways: 

Yours was the faith of flowers: yours the pride 
Of Beauty's final laughter — now the days, 

Hallowed by your pervading light, sweep by 
Till Death, grown golden since the hour you died, 

Calls us to you . . . it will be good to die. 



It will be good to die since you have died: 

It will be good to go the way you trod 
Wide-eyed, undreaming, like some lovely god 

Flushed with the dawn of an unearthly pride. 
It will be good to try the ways you tried, 

And venture unafraid into the dark 
That lies beyond the furthest planet's spark — 

// will be good to die since you have died. 
And yet you have not left us; you are here 

In the unfolding leaves that tell of Spring, 
And in the throats of birds whose voices sing 

Your beauty's resurrection . . . you are near 
When day is ended — we, remembering, 

Shall never lose you, lonely year by year. 

[7] 



We who have looked on Death and found him 
fair — 

We who have read his poem in your face 
And seen his quiet fingers pause to trace 

Their dusky legend, and to linger there 
On lips that have forgotten song and prayer 

And the swift light of laughter, and the grace 
Of Love that no long shadow can deface — 

Of your dear presence we are more aware. 
To live is to remember, and to die 

Ultimate recollection — we through you 
Have touched on things eternal, and the sky 

That in your new nativity is blue 
With unprevisioned radiance shall keep 

The sanctity of your untroubled sleep. 

Faltering words that cannot tell my love — 

Faltering songs that cannot sing your praise — 
The searching loneliness of twilit days 

My hearfs dumb, stumbling impotence shall 
prove. 
Always your light is with me, near or far, 

Eventual love, a light that stoops to bless 
One who but feels his kinship with a star 

— A love transcending love — a loneliness. 
But you and I and these you love are sure 

That all is well with you . . . and yet we feel 
A strange futility has set its seal 

Upon our hearts, knowing we must endure 
Silence — God is so silent in His pride — 

It will be good to die since you have died. 

February, 1920. 
[8] 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Spindrift 15 

The Beggar's Shadow 16 

The Great Bell 27 

From Catullus ........ 30 

Poetry 31 

To Some Modern Poet 32 

Mock Not the Poet 33 

Learning . 34 

True Beauty 35 

'Thou Shalt Be Free as Mountain 

Wind: ..." 36 

Nevertheless $7 

On Reading Some Elizabethan Love 

Songs 38 

Songs to Lesbia 39 

Hyacinthus 57 

Demeter's Lament 59 

'EXsvy; l\<x -pvawto 60 

Alcaeus 61 

In a City 62 

Life's Unity ......... 63 

From a Grave in Flanders . . . . .64 

One Killed in Action 65 

Aftermath 67 

April, 1919 68 

Song in Dejection 70 

The Ships of Night . 71 

Fantasia J2 

Winter in New Hampshire .... 73 

First Violets . 75 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Blue-Birds 76 

April Song 77 

The Reed j8 

A Lark Sings 79 

An Elegy of Spring 80 

My Pear Tree 81 

Judas-Tree 82 

Sunday, September 14, 1919 .... 83 

An Autumn Garden 84 

The Last Rose 85 

Autumn, A Rhapsody 86 

Autumnal .87 

Lament 88 

Late Moon 89 

Wild Geese . 90 

All Souls' Eve 91 

On Watch 92 

Stockbridge 93 

November Wind 94 

Written During the Parade of the First 

Division, New York City .... 95 

St. Paul's School 96 

To a Friend With Some Verses ... 97 

To the Same Friend . 98 

To One Who Is a Voice 99 

Harbour Court 100 

To a Poet 101 

On Returning 102 

Imperfection 103 

Could I But Find 104 

Stars 105 

Icarian 106 

At Parting 109 

To Augusta 110 

To Augusta On Her Birthday . . . .111 



CONTENTS 

Page 

To Undine 112 

To Two Sisters 113 

Christina 115 

To Laura Louise 116 

Midnight . . . 117 

My Friend . . . 118 

His Friendship ........ 119 

The Quest 120 

January 23RD, 1919 . 122 

At Daybreak 124 

Others Have Given More 125 

Sunset 126 

To One Long Silent 127 

Always the Sunset ....... 128 

To You 129 

Love's Triumph 130 

Promise 131 

The Answer 132 

Beauty 133 

My Song . . . . . 134 

Remembered 135 

Treasure 136 

Apologia 137 

Finis 141 

L'Envoi 142 



SPINDRIFT 



"A lonely surge of ancient spray 
Told of an unforgetful sea — " 

E. A. Robinson 



SPINDRIFT 

Spindrift its evanescent beauty flings 

Into the glad, glad wind — the silver breath 
Of beauty-haunted waves that seek their death 

Along the sands where the grey, lonely wings 
Of sea-birds sweep, 

And where the ageless deep 
Breathes its eternal tumult, moaning low 

With the long urge of its moon-maddened tides 
Reaching in hunger up the naked sides 

Of windy dunes, and when its waters glow 
Under the moon's elusive traceries, 

It flings its silver spindrift to the skies. 

The moon of Beauty draws the tides in me, 

Moon-gathered tides of an immortal quest, 
Along the golden strand of Poetry ; 

The waters of my spirit seeking rest 
Break wave on wave their hungry hearts, and 
fling 

Glad spindrift to the windy arch of sky, 
And spend their strength — so the swift songs I 
sing 

Are but the spindrift of mad waves that cry- 
Within my heart — spindrift of waves that die. 



[15] 



THE BEGGAR'S SHADOW 
Dramatis Personae: 

BEGGAR 
POET 
BISHOP 

WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
CHILD 
LADY 
KNIGHT 

BURGHERS, THEIR WIVES, CHILDREN, CHORISTERS 
AND ATTENDANTS. 



Scene: 
An open market place before the doors of a great 
Gothic Cathedral. The Cathedral fills the 
entire right of the background. The doors 
are very large, of carven oak, and studded 
with immense nails. . . They stand at the top 
of three stone steps. All that may be seen 
of the Cathedral are the doors, dusky 
carvings and niches containing the old, 
weather-stained Saints, and an oriel- 
window above the doors. Off to the left, 
above the roof-tops and beyond the town, 
can be seen the far, blue hills over which, as 
the play progresses, the moon rises. When 
the play opens, dusk gradually deepens into 
night and the scene is illumined only by the 
growing moonlight and the suffused glow 
[16] 



from the Cathedral windows. Whenever 
the doors are opened, a path of warm rich 
light pours across the moon-silvered empti- 
ness of the square. Chimes ring out a clear 
melody which is echoed away among the 
hills. The Beggar, totally muffled in a great 
cloak, hobbles across the market-place and 
settles himself on the steps of the Cathedral 
to await the evening worshippers. Silence. 
Then a song drifts down the street: 

Poet [singing without] : 
Lean, silver- footed winds 

Have winged my heart with song — 
And yet my way, it has been long, too long! 

The dew upon the wayside grass 

Kissed my tired feet — alas, alas, 
My way has been too long! 

I quaffed the sunset's living wine 

And trod the paths of dusk — at last 
Came down the wind a breath divine 

Of pealing chimes, and looming vast 
Athwart the sunset rose the towers 

Of this far city of my quest — 
Light-girdled towers in the west; 

I left the fields all mute with flowers — 
Bound on the sandals of my song — 

[17] 



Over the dust of crumbling hours 
I came — and, oh, the way was long ! 
[The Poet enters, a tall, slender figure shabbily 
clad and wearing sandals. He catches sight 
of the Beggar who reaches out supplicating 
hands. The Poet turns pityingly toward 
him. ] 

Poet: 
Beleaguered by the hosts of Poverty, 

Hungry and cold, brother to beg of me 
Is begging of the moon! I cannot give, 

Unless it be the shadowy gold of song 

Or precious metal of my heart's one poem. . . . 

[Then as the Beggar shrinks back into his corner 

and the moonlight gradually floods the scene 

with luminous gloom, the Poet turns again 

to the Beggar.] 

Poet: 
Lo, now the moon goes dreaming through the sky 

And all the sea is lifted as the hills 
And pleads in husky whispers of its love; 

Upon its troubled heart the moon's pale feet 
Ruthlessly trample in calm, cold disdain . . . 
See! Down the lonely streets slim moon- 
beams steal 
To dance with the shy shadows — I will sing 
This little song — 'tis all I have for thee. 
[And the Poet sings] : 
Urge of the moon within my heart, 
Urge of the moon across the sea, 
[18] 



Sundering anguish, sudden smart 
Of Beauty calling me — 

Murmuring music of a reed 

Breathed from the old wind's foolish lips, 
Moon-maddened poet, tell thy creed, 

Thy moon-conceived apocalypse: 

That men are starlit flakes of foam 

Lifted on Beauty's tide to thee, 
Homeless, yet seeking for a home 

Beyond the bourne of memory — 

Obeying thine eternal urge, 

Oh moon, he spends his fragile breath — 

Foam-tossed along the waves that surge 
From lonesome seas of death. 

[As the Poet's song ends, the great doors of the 
Cathedral swing slowly open. Singing is 
heard floating down the street and a proces- 
sion streams in across the square and 
proceeds up the path of golden light into the 
Cathedral; crucifer, choristers, priests, and 
last of all, the Bishop who remains alone on 
the steps silhouetted against the light. The 
Beggar's mute supplications have been 
passed unheeded. To him the Bishop ad- 
dresses himself. The Poet stands aside 
apparently lost in his dreams]. 

[19] 



Bishop : 
Beggared of this world's goods, I, priest of God, 

Give thee my blessing! Poverty herself 
Is a stern mistress; yet Lord Jesus Christ 

Did not disdain her lowly company. 
The good God bless thee ! May the Prince of 
Peace 
Receive thee washed of sin into His realms 
And keep thee His for all eternity! 
[The Beggar shrinks back into the shadows and 
the Bishop turns to enter the Cathedral, but 
a Woman of the Streets runs suddenly 
across the square and throws herself, sob- 
bing hysterically, at his feet. Clinging about 
his knees, her voice broken by weeping, she 
speaks. ] 

Woman : 
Most holy Father of the Church of Christ, 

Although my life is steeped and dyed in sin 
And all my body's beauty sold for lust, 

I come to beg the blessing of the Cross 
And the sure shelter of thy church — May God 
Soften thine heart! Succor and shelter me! 
Bishop : 
Misguided daughter! Fallen angel! Thou 

Derelict beauty, pray for grace. May He 
Whose sacred word forgave the Magdalene 

Bidding her sin no more, forgive thy sin, 
That one day thou mayest dwell in chastity 
Under the hallowed shadow of God's House 

[20l 



And take that sacrament thou mayest not now 
Receive . . . 

Poet [coming suddenly and angrily forward] : 
Oh, lying, base extortioner — 

Thou parasite upon the dogs of state, 
Invoke thy foolish God! In vain thou callest 

The blessings of an empty heaven down ! 
Thou who dost weave thy lies and sell them dear 

For hard-earned pennies ! False interpreter 
Of that young Christ who died for common men, 
Blaspheme no longer! 

Bishop: 
Singer of swift songs, 

Voice of the faery people, evil folk 
Who mock believers, dream-deluded one, 

All these thy words but crucify thy soul 
Upon the crooked cross of thy black heart! 

Poet: 
They do but seek the shelter of God's house — 
Grant them but this . . . 
Bishop : 
May Christ in heaven forgive 

This bitter ignorance and sin of thine! 
[The Bishop makes the sign of the cross and 
goes into the Cathedral. Music from a 
great organ within and occasional chanting 
float from the Cathedral and continue, now 
soft, now louder, throughout the rest of the 
play. The Poet is again lost in dreams — 
the Woman sobs on the steps — and the 

[21] 



Beggar waits to beg by her side. Slowly the 
Burghers and their wives and children enter 
and pass along the light into the Cathedral. 
All pass the Poet and the Woman with 
contempt and refuse the Beggar's mute ap- 
peals. At last a Child breaks from his 
mother's side, and, running over to the 
weeping Woman, puts his small arms about 
her neck and kisses her. ] 
Child : 

Poor girl, thou shalt not cry! Lift up thine 
eyes ! 

[And then as the Beggar reaches out to beg, the 
Child gives him a penny and kisses him. 
With a cry of apprehension the mother runs 
toward him, but the lad goes quickly to the 
Poet and kisses him also.] 
Child : 

Here is another — I must kiss him too. 

[The frightened mother catches the Child in her 
arms and hurries into the Cathedral] 
Woman : 

Great God ! His kiss has burned into my soul — 
Yet I am merchandise ! Come buy ! Come 
buy! 

[She breaks into hysterical laughter and disap- 
pears into the darkness whence she came, 
brushing past the last people to approach the 
Cathedral, a tall, fair Lady and her 
Knight.] 

[22] 



Poet: 

[Springing suddenly and eagerly forward at sight 

of the Lady.] 
Love, thou, art come! And thou hast kept the 
tryst! 

[He seizes her hands and kisses them.] 

Lady: 

[Laughing lightly and putting the Poet from 

her.] 
Poor poet, truly maddened by the moon 
Thou art! That was a month ago — 
And all the foolish promises I made 
Are as thy kisses, as the silver dew 
That feeds the secret hunger of the flowers. 

The dust upon thy sandals, it is dust 
And the first wind will carry it away. 

The kisses that I gave thee, they were given 
Because the moonbeams made thee beautiful — 

And I was lonely. Now the dawn of Love, 
Upgathering all the beauty that was mine 
In other days, as the sun gathers dew, 
Has flamed and has consumed my promises 
Which are as shadows . . . 
Poet: 
Can it, can it be 

That thou art as the rest? 
Lady: 
Forget. Forgive. 

[Turning to take her Knight's hand, she ap- 
proaches the Cathedral] 

[23] 



Lady [As the Beggar draws near beseechingly'] : 
Drive off this beggar! 

[The Knight strikes him down with the fiat of 
his sword, and the Lady, laughing, turns to 
the Poet who stares hopelessly after her.] 
Lady: 
Poet, fare thee well! 

[They enter the Cathedral and the great doors 
swing to behind them. Music and singing 
of voices praising God float from the Cathe- 
dral windows. Alone in the gloom, the 
Poet raises the fallen Beggar in his arms.] 
Poet: 
Ephemeral it may be! For a day 

Man threads the lovely mazes of the world — 
Laughter and tears, the mockery of Love, 

And the great call of Beauty shake his soul, 
Until his days like autumn leaves drift down, 

And Death comes sweeping like a mighty wind 
Through his soul's branches, till at last he stands, 
Glimmering, spectral, in some pale, new dawn, 
Alone upon the far edge of the world — 

Mocked and derided by the birds of thought 
Whose swift wings trembled through his mind — 
Alone, 
Treading at dawn the dew, at noon the dust, 
And after sunset lying weary down 

In the white dew again to take his rest — 
To dream his dreams — and rise again with dawn 
Obedient to that far, imperious call 

[24] 



Of beauty — so man treads the way of life — 

And be he prophet, poet, priest of God — 
Or be he Christ — at sunset he shall sleep! 
[The Poet has propped the Beggar before the 
doors of the Cathedral and turning to go 
addresses him.] 

Poet: 
Fare thee well, brother! At the doors of God 

We stand and wait; and on the other side 
Are only mockery and other doors 

Where other men shall stand and wait in 
vain. . . . 
[The Poet goes down the street and his last song 

rings out into the night.] 
Man with his hands has slain 

Much that was good and fair; 
Yet from his blood and pain 
Beauty shall spring again 
With star-dust in her hair ; 

Beauty, man cannot slay, for she 
Is mother of eternity ! 

[The singing within the Cathedral surges through 

the night and the moon is lost in clouds.] 

Choir : 

[Chanting within.] 

"Lift up your heads, oh ye Gates, 

and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors : 

and the King of Glory shall come in!" 

[The immense doors of the Cathedral thunder 

down from their hinges. Without his cloak 



and wearing only a loin-cloth, his arms 
outstretched, the Beggar stands before the 
open doorway, the figure of the crucified 
Christ silhouetted against the light.] 
Beggar [crying in a loud voice] : 
Father, forgive them, for they do not know! 



[26] 



THE GREAT BELL 
(An old Chinese Legend) 

[This poem was printed in an anonymous 
paper, in Cambridge, March, 1919, and is here 
reprinted with the kind permission of the 
editors. ] 

"Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai, 
Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
Over the temples and the town 

The great bell peals — its golden moan 
Shudders, and dies into a lone, 

Thin silver sigh, 
A maiden's cry 

Calling, pleading for her shoe, 
A silken slipper, yellow, blue . . . 

"Ko-Ngai . '. . Ko-Ngai, 
Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
The great bell tolls above the town! 
Ko-Ngai is calling for her shoe, 

u Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai, 
Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
In China many years ago 

The august Emperor Yong-Lo 
Reigned in the dynasty called Ming. 

Yong-Lo wished a mighty bell 
Hanged in the towers of Pe-King, 

A bell to sound one hundred li; 
He summoned the Mandarin Kouan-Yu 
And bade him cast an iron bell 

[27] 



Strengthened with brass, deepened with gold, 
Sweetened with silver, and carved with old 

Buddhist prayers, a bell four- fold, 
To hang in the towers of Pe-King — 

The greatest bell in all the land 
Cast at the Emperor's command 

In the golden dynasty called Ming. 

Twice were the molten metals met 

Yet would not mingle, and the bell 
Could not be cast. The Emperor sent 

And bade Kouan-Yu try yet again — 
Failure? Well then he must lose his head — 

Thus writ on a scroll of yellow silk 
And sealed with the august seal it read, 

"Failure again will mean thy head." 

Now Kouan-Yu had a daughter, slim 

And fair — a lily-maiden she — 
And when she read the celestial word 

Of the Son of Heaven, she feared and went 
To her troubled father and said to him 

"Now that the Emperor hath sent, 
Let the bell be cast another time, 

Oh, father, yet another time!" 
Thus spake the maid Ko-Ngai. 

The seething metals met in wrath, 

Silver and gold and iron and brass, 
A molten lake of white-hot flame . . . 

[28] 



"Let the bell be cast !" — a cry ! Ko-Ngai 
Leapt into the fiery hell, 

And the metals mingled! Lo, the bell 
Was cast. Of the girl no trace remained 

Save a tiny shoe her father grasped 
As she sprang to her death — She died that she 

Might save him — through her sacrifice 
The metals join, the bell be cast. 

And still to-day — 

"Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai!" 
The Great Bell moans to the sunset sky 

The little Chinese maiden's name — 
A great, deep golden sob, a sigh 

Of silver sweetness "Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
As each day dies in the sunset's flame, 
The Great Bell sobs the maiden's name, 
(f Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngail" 
"Hiai . . . Hiail" 



[29] 



FROM CATULLUS 

"Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus . . . " 

Let us live long, oh love, my love, 

And love while yet we have the light, 
For once our sun has set, dear love, 

Remains the long, unbroken night 
For us to sleep, oh love, my love. 

Give me a thousand kisses, love, 
A second thousand, sweet as death. 

An hundred thousand thousand more — 
Yet more until we lose our breath, 

Confuse our reckoning, and then 
Kiss madly, love, my love, the more. 



[30] 



POETRY 

When day is broken up in violet gleams 

Across the western windows of the sky, 
Then dreams and all the mystery of dreams 

Quicken the world with passion such as seems 
Half melody; 

And in my heart I hear the far-off calling, 
The far-off calling of some wistful star 

Lost in the dizzy heavens, falling, falling, 
Falling, bewildered, far . . . 

And seeking out beyond the world's bold 
ramparts 
Into eternity, I find thy soul, 

Daughter of Song, Mother of hidden Music, 
My star, my quest, my dream, my flaming goal. 



[31] 



TO SOME MODERN POETS 

Go, teach the thrush your anapaests and rhymes 

And make a sonnet of the cricket's song. 
Or sing with dark amazement of the crimes 

Committed in the gutter. It is strong, 
Virile and living to insist that one 

Sing of contagion reeking, black with flies, 
Under the hot kiss of the lustful sun, 

And so extol the mind's obscenities. 
Nature and all the ineffectual dreams 

That shadow forth the poet's apocalypse 
Are thin and vapid; — poetasters, fools, 

Think you to rein the impetuous mountain- 
streams, 
Or with the ordered chatter of your schools 

Still the Memnonian music of Song's lips? 



[32] 



MOCK NOT THE POET 

Blushing deep golden to the azure tips 

Of her warm fingers, the uplifted Dawn 
Snatched a swift kiss from Night's half-parted 
lips 

Petulant, as a hamadryad slips 
Impatient of caresses from a faun 

To splash her length and linger in the cool 
Quivering waters of a poet's pool, 

Ruffled, so mortals say, by winds of dawn. 
Oh ye who cannot know whereof the bard 

Sings in his heart of hearts, and cannot see 
The beauty-riven steeps where he must climb, 

Mock not his singing, lest your hands have 
marred 
The secret sources of the melody 

Your hearts shall hunger for in aftertime. 



[33] 



LEARNING 

Learning vouchsafes to each his scanty fare; 

For some must find contentment in a crumb, 
While others stand inapprehensive, dumb — . 

Of their abundant blessings unaware; 
Some break the bread of wisdom, glad to share 

Their separate advantages, and some 
Hoard their achievements, till Death's fingers 
numb 

Their hearts and bring at last surcease of care. 
A poor petitioner at Learning's shrine, 

I came and found the crowded tables full ; 
All the gregarious scholars of the age 

Devoured, gluttonous, the bread and wine 
That Beauty, of her wisdom bountiful, 

Set forth before the poet and the sage. 



[34] 



TRUE BEAUTY 

Poets who throng the thoroughfares of fame 

And clamor for the laurels and the bays 
That bind the brows of Homer, or who claim 

That all the spent renown of other days 
And other poets be their just reward, 

Clamor but vainly, for remote, austere, 
God has unsheathed eternal Beauty's sword 

And the bold stars are hushed and pale with 
fear. 
Look you ! The very battlements of Dawn 

Are flushed with sudden splendor, and the 
spears 
Of the true hosts of Beauty gleam, and drawn 

Are all the moon-bright sabres of the Years 
Where winging up the slopes of light I heard 

God's angels rustle ... in my arms you 
stirred. 



[35] 



"THOU SHALT BE FREE AS MOUNTAIN 

WINDS ..." 

(The Tempest) 

Oh to be free as mountain winds — 

As mountain winds be free! 
To sweep down on the joyous fields, 

And all the wealth that summer yields 
Of thyme and honeysuckle sweet, 

To gather in my happy flight 
As with contemptuous, dizzy feet 

I dance down to the sea — 
To crown the waves all silver-white 

With crests of starry foam, and sing 
Along the shore the melody 

Which from the lonely hills I bring. 
Oh to be free as mountain winds — 

As mountain winds be free! 



[36] 



NEVERTHELESS 

Slim, adolescent, with what leafy greeting 

The dryad birches to the wind's will bend! 
Can Winter keep the truant Spring from meeting 

Her unknown lover? And can you, dear 
friend, 
Gather the constellations, near and far, 

And hang them on the bosom of the Moon? 
Or can you light your taper with a star? 

Or read the rubric of the sunset's rune? 
Beauty forefend! For if the hand of man 

Could lift his chisel to the ordered skies 
Wind-pillared and enduring, he would mar 

Those measureless, blue archways 'neath 
whose span 
The swift years bubble . . . Ah, but God is wise 

And Beauty kind: a star is just a star. 



[37] 



ON READING SOME ELIZABETHAN 
LOVE SONGS 

The long-remembered lisp of leaves 
And the remembered hush of hills — 

The wind that passing by bereaves 
Fleet April of her daffodils — 

Stir in the heart the memory 

Of Beauty smiling through her tears — 
Man in his love-wrung litany 

Mocked by the laughter of the years. 



[38] 



SONGS TO LESBIA 

I. 

The lilies bloom about your door 
And every night they sing to you ! 

For you they guard their precious store 
Of golden pollen and white dew; 

And in the twilight of the days 
The lilies glimmering and blue 

Lift up their voices in your praise. 



[39] 



II. 

My heart was as a broken reed 

Wherein Life breathed a song, and blew 
As on the pipes of Pan, a poem 

That was my love for you. 

And Love's low music filled my heart 
With simple beauty, and it seemed 

That this was music lovlier far 
Than ever Poet dreamed. 



[40] 



III. 

The wings of dusk, all silvery 
With stars and drops of dew, 

Shadow my heart with mystery . 
Or is it love for you? 

And when the silver star-bells ring 
Their windy melodies, it seems 

That I can almost hear you sing, 
Love of my lonely dreams. 



[41] 



IV. 

When shadows fall and evening brings 
Peace to the world, when twilight flings 

Over the fields a veil of blue, 

Then you and all the dreams of you 

Beat on my heart's glad, wounded wings, 
When shadows fall. 

The fragrance of remembered springs 
In other lives, Love's murmurings 

Plead in my lonely heart for you, 
When shadows fall. 

And all the empty, foolish things 
I said to you, the whisperings 

Of love as silver-frail as dew, 

All plead within my heart for you, 

My heart with happy, bleeding wings, 
When shadows fall. 



[42] 



V. 

Where sunsets go when they have died, 
Where perished dreams and visions go, 

I long to lose myself and hide 
Where sunsets go. 

Quit of the golden chains of pride 

— The chains of self that fetter so — 
Where sunsets go shall I abide. 

When on the shores of Time, Life's tide 
Ebbs in its slumber, long and slow, 

My soul along the waves shall glide, 
Where sunsets go. 



[43] 



VI. 
When the Day's golden footfall left me lonely 

And left my garden luminous with dew, 
I sought among the starlit flowers only 

Some little sense of you. 

And one frail lily lifting silver laughter 
Greeted me with its beauty — so, at last, 

Lady of lilies, you came to me after 
The day was past. 



[44] 



VII. 

As the waves waste the tawny sands 
To feed the splendor of the sea, 

Girl with those frail, unhappy hands 
You waste the heart of me. 

Yet as the waves have made the sands 
All rich with treasure of the sea, 

So you with your enslaving hands 
Have decked the heart of me. 



[45] 



VIII. 

Inscrutably the shadows work their rune 

Over the crannied bleakness of the wall, 
And there is sorrow in the hollow call 

Of an indifferent vender whose words croon 
Their meaningless advertisement — the moon 

Silvers the city with its solemn pall, 
And down the aching streets, antiphonal, 

Echo the phrases of some favorite tune; — 
Oh, it is all quite common ! You and I, 

The moon and city, day by day we meet 
Only to part with inarticulate 

And sorrowful surrender to a fate 
That we have forged from our own poverty 

To crown our laboring visions with defeat. 



[46] 



IX. 

Through Gate of Horn or Gate of Ivory, 

Disturbing apparition, have you come 
To trouble me with dreaming? Is there some 

Prophetic utterance you bring to me? 
Or have your lips learned of Love's minstrelsy 

To syllable the passion of the Spring — 
That the still night's star-sown immensity 

Dwindles before the loveliness you bring? 
It may be that illusory and cold 

You came, a phantom from the realms of 
sleep — 
It may be that when Dawn's white flowers unfold 

Their petals, you have other trysts to keep — 
But it may be that in your guile you came 

To scorch my spirit in your beauty's flame. 



[47] 



X. 

On furtive, dewy sandals, shadows creep 

Along the valley, through the songs of birds, 

And the shy Dawn comes over meadows deep 
With wakening flowers — and through my 
curtained sleep 

Tremulous, float your words. 



[48] 



XL 

Although the dawn was grey, I was not sad, 
For you came to me in the waiting gloom 

And broke the throbbing silence of my room 
With sudden singing — and my heart was glad, 

Although the dawn was grey. 

Swift from your laughing lips the music fell 
And the dark mists of passion rolled away, 

And I was lifted from the night's long hell, 
Although the dawn was grey. 



[49] 



XII. 

Oh undiscerning and indifferent, 

The heart has prescience of infinity, 
Thrilled by the touch of mutability, 

And strives to solve its own bewilderment — 
We with our ineffectual ways content 

Eke out our lives' poor triviality, 
And heed not in their unreality 

The precious metal of the heart soon spent. 
Doubt not I love you — were it otherwise, 

Another's lips had sung ere now your praise! 
The fortitude of foolish and of wise 

Could not unravel my entangled days ; 
You in the innocence of your bright ways 

Have failed to compass my apostasies. 



[50] 



XIII. 

Doubt not I love you! In the loneliness 

Of ultimate surrender when your barque 
Ventures alone into death's sequent dark, 

High on the topmost mast my heart shall 
swing, 
A golden lantern, and the bitterness 

And sorrow of departure, vanishing, 
Shall melt away — and you shall know me there 

By the wind's whispered laughter in your hair. 
Doubt not I love you! It were sacrilege 

And profanation to think otherwise; 
For though my offering be only flowers, 

Deem it not other than poet's pledge — 
Finding in this unworthy sacrifice 

Some shadow of the beauty that was ours. 



5i 



XIV. 

Always the mist in your hair, the sea in your 
eyes, 
Grey with the beauty of sea- spun reveries, 
And the faint touch of your hand 

And the sound of the sea 
On the cold, inarticulate land, 

Poor, passionate sea, 
There on the rocks where we trod, 

Apart, alone . . . 
Came, like the breath of God, 

To the dumb stone, 
Swift the far call of the sea, 
On your lips a song: 

"Always a child-friend to me, 
Though drear, though long, 
Life, Love, Eternity." 
Your song, your song! 



[52] 



XV. 

The Year has played her last uncertain pawn 

And waits the sure achievement of defeat, 
Knowing that the indifferent hands of Dawn 
Must strangle her — of Dawn beneath whose 
feet 
The east is wounded gold — whose coming brings 

Another Year to whet the lusts of Time 
And scatter all the songs your poet sings 

And cheat Youth's heart of its appointed 
prime — 
Love, I have burned my old, unworthy songs 
And held for my dead dreams proud obse- 
quies ; 
I care not if with laurels or with thorns 

The new Year binds my brows — the righted 
wrongs 
And unavenged crimes of the world: the scorns 
That Time shall lash men with are more than 
these. 

December 31st, 1919. 



[53] 



XVI. 

Shivering leaves my heart put forth 
To rustle in the breath of Spring 
Whose summer-hunted feet wend north, 

Songless winter following, 
To touch to life the silver froth 

Of his snowy covering- 
Quicken it to blossoming. 

Swift, singing thoughts like mating birds 

Nested in my heart's green shade 
Uttering their winged words 

From their leafy ambuscade — 
And the poems that they made, 

Love-lisped, the mute branches stirred: 
"Love and Beauty cannot fade: 

This is Love's own word." 

With eyes brimmed blue with mockery 
And wind-looped, sunlight- ruffled hair, 

Came a maiden dizzily 

Through the summer-sleepy air, 

Shook the branches merrily 
Of my heart's uplifted tree — 

There was autumn everywhere. 

Leafless in the gloom it stands; 

All the birds have taken wing ; 
Autumn's slender, sunburned hands 

Mock the beauty of the Spring! 

[54] 



Yet where the grey branches swing, 
Spectral in their withering, . 

Unseen lips are murmuring . . . 
Murmuring . . . 



[55] 



XVII. 

When you have trod my last dream down 
Into the dust of withered things, 

And Time with neither smile nor frown 
Gathers the songs your poet sings, 

Look back, and through the eyes of age 
Interpret — if you can divine — 

The parable ; then turn the page 

And smile at this moth-love of mine. 



[#] 



HYACINTHUS 

Hyacinth-flowers along the sea 

Are strewn by Zephyr's sobbing breath; 

Hyacinths from the windy hills, 
Blossoms of Hyacinthus' death, 

With purple petals breathing woe 
For the Greek lad of long ago. 

There where the sea was foaming on the strand 

Stood Hyachinthus, slender, sunburned lad 
With wide brown eyes and tawny, wind-sweet 
hair; 

Naked he plunged among the waves, and Dawn 
Flung far the portals of the east, and lo ! 

The golden- throated Muses sang to greet 
Apollo as he came across the sea; 

And Hyacinthus rising from the waves 
Laughed in the glory of the sun-god's smile, 

And with the sea's grey kiss upon his lips 
And the dawn's sudden splendor in his eyes 

Greeted his friend — and all that day they 
played, 
The god and boy at discus, ran and swam, 

And dreamed at night under the whispering 
trees. 

But one night Zephyr, lonely in the leaves, 
Was making little poems for the moon 

[57] 



And singing them, until it chanced he saw 

Young Hyacinthus sleeping on the grass. 
The timid dew had touched his clustering curls 

All glimmering with moonshine, and his lips 
Were parted in a smile, and with one hand 

He clasped the god's. Then Zephyr loved the 
lad, 

And wept in loneliness among the leaves. 

But on a day when Hyacinthus played 

With his god-friend, poor jealous Zephyr stole 
Un seen among the near-by trees, and caught 

And deftly turned a flying discus — so 
He thought to wound Apollo, but, alas 

Struck Hyacinthus . . . 

With a sob of pain 

And a low moan of anguish, the boy died; 
From his spilled blood sprang fragrant hyacinths 

Whose petals, graven with Apollo's tears, 
Spell a heart's sorrow for a dying friend . . . 

And yet at dusk poor Zephyr, sobbing, comes 
To kiss the blossoms and to strew them far 
Along the sounding billows of the sea. 



[58] 



DEMETER'S LAMENT 

The hearts of nightingales still bleed, still bleed 
For the sweet daughter that my heart has lost ; 

And the mute meadows riotously tossed 

With wind and flowers, bleed, in sorrow 
bleed — 

Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 

Long have I wandered on my weary quest. 

The dawn-flushed east and sunset-hearted west 
Laugh me to scorn because my heart is sad. 

The frowning north and laughter-loving south 
Make mock of me — and yet my heart is sad 

As withered meadows in an autumn drouth. 
Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 

The foolish winds that dance among the stars 
And sing of all the beauty of the sky 

Have mocked me also — still I hear their song; 
And at their hollow music sorrows throng 

My old, old heart — far older than the stars. 
Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 

The hearts of nightingales still bleed, still bleed — 
Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 



[59] 



'EXsvyj 8ta Yuvatxcov 

"Hold up the glass that I may see !" The queen 

Gazed and was silent . . . Then imperiously 
She laughed and turned away: 

"Am I that Helen for whose sake 
Cities were sacked, the blood of heroes spilled, 

The tears of mothers shed? Am I that queen 
For whom men strove and died? 

And shall Time's finger write the poem of age 
Across my brow ? And shall my hair grow grey, 

Chilled by his kiss? Is Time my lover now? 
And all my body's beauty, shall it be 

The victim of his gradual desire?" 
Only the autumn wind laughed in her hair . . . 

And as she passed along the leaf-strewn ways 
A lingering rose 

Showered its starry petals at her feet. 
In her far-gazing eyes a sudden light 

Flashed, and was gone — "Though I must 
go !" she cried, 
"Yet shall my death be beautiful!" — She bent 

Above the fallen petals of the rose 
And wove of them a crown about her head, 

And went to her last lover, Time, to die, 
Bright with the living beauty of the dead. 



[60] 



ALCAEUS 

Lips long stilled in the dust, 

Passionate heart that sang 
A wild low music by the Lesbian shore — 

Lover of Sappho, thou whose singing rang 
Loud in the clangor of tumultuous arms — 

Whose songs the Lesbian girls were wont to 
sing 
Over the drowsy wine-cups, 

Thou whose word 
Was winged with magic music, 

Thou who heard 
The coming of the flower-girdled Spring — 

I heard thee singing, singing yestereve. 
The sudden passion of a thrush's note, 

The tawny wings, the throbbing breast, the 
throat 
Of golden melody were all thine own ! 

Lo, the swift beauty of the sunset smote 
My heart to silence. 

In that thrush's song, 
So that it seemed out of the past a breath 

Of Lesbian hyacinths and aching hearts, 
I heard thee singing from the Lands of Death. 



[61] 



IN A CITY 

The sea is crying in my heart to-night 

With all its haunting passion and its pain; 
The stars above the sleeping roofs gleam white 

Against the sky's dark beauty, and again 
I feel the salt wind through tall pines, and know 

That I am far away . . . 
The muttering of distant streets moans low. . . . 

Ah, somewhere languid Day 
Laughs lazily, and happy flowers blow. 

But here Night broods alone 
Above the city — and I too alone 

Wonder that life should bind and fetter so. 



[62] 



LIFE'S UNITY 

The soul which trembles through the universe 

Touching to life both blade of grass and star; 
The deep, unspoken sympathy that links 

All living things — the beauty, the swift pain 
Of new-born love — the sense of hidden wings 

Fluttering in the soul — this unity 
Which man calls God is but the inner flame 

That gives us life! 

And although clouds hang low 
And the whole world grows dark — though love 
and truth 

Seem lost forever — yet beyond our gloom 
Somewhere stars laugh and little children sing 

And flowers blossom on the rood of Time. 



[63] 



FROM A GRAVE IN FLANDERS 

Petals grow grey with sorrow by his grave, 

Faded rose-petals, these you send to me, 
Dim with the beauty of his memory, 

The memory of your dear boy, my friend — 
Withered rose-petals from his lonely grave 

Fragrant with all the love you bore for him 
Where in a war-scarred forest, sweet and dim, 

He sleeps the sleep of God's eternity. 



[64] 



ONE KILLED IN ACTION 

Sorrow and silence: through the dusk there 
thrilled 
A shivering sigh that stirred the lonely 
grass . . . 
Day lifted Beauty's chalice to her lips 

And flung it from her — in the heavens spilled 
The starry wine of evening — we must pass 

Like Day into the greater Night's eclipse — 
We, too, must pass ! 

Dear friend gone out before us in the Night 
Is there no Dawn, no glimmering of Light 
Where we shall pass? 

Low through the lifted leaves a murmur came 
And the stars quivered, little tongues of flame. 

It seemed an angel stooped among the trees 
With wings that shadowed his dim-haloed hair, 

And eyes love-haunted with love's memories, 
And spectral lilies wreathed about his head — 

And in a voice untroubled by despair 

He murmured, "I am near you, near though 
dead!" 

Was it a vision? Did I really see 

An angel? Nay, it seemed that as he leant 

Out of the twilight and his whispered kiss 
Bade me farewell, his face was troubled, spent 

[65] 



With longing for the living — wistfully 

He smiled and faded . . . can it be that this 

Glimmering on my hand is only dew, 
The sorrow of the never-ending years? 

Ah, in the dusk it trembles, silvery, blue, 
Silently- falling tears. . . . 



[66] 



AFTERMATH 

The lonely leaves have fallen on his grave 
And sobbed to silence ; yellow leaves and gold 

Have buried him, and twilight's star- foamed 
wave 
Had borne his spirit to eternal night ; 

The poor, dead moon gleams miserably white 
Over his body lying stiff and cold. . . . 

They tell me he is dead, and yet I hear 
Him singing in the dawning of each day: 

They tell me he is dead, yet trembling near 
He whispers, "I am only far away 

Waiting for you — am only far away." 



[67] 



APRIL, 1919 

Oh April, April, happy, happy April 

Maiden with flower-tangled, flower-shadowed 
hair, 
Dancing along the windy meadows, dancing 

On feet that glimmer like the feet of stars, 
Daughter of Dawn, 

Where will you now be wending? 
Whither, oh whither, that you haste away 

Toward the moon's mountains? 
Do the feet of Summer, 

The golden-sandaled, quiet feet of Summer, 
Follow you all too swiftly, that you flee 

Into the snow-kissed mountains of the moon? 
Yet I am grateful, laughter-loving April, 

For with your music you have brought again 
Beauty to veil the dark, death-glutted trenches — 

Beauty to lift the fallen hearts of men ! 

The April twilight falls upon the world 
Muffling the riven trenches, ugly scars 

That mar the beauty of the broken meadows — 
Fields of Flanders, 

Blood-drenched fields of Flanders, 

The desolation of blind human hearts. . . . 

But April, April, foolish-hearted April, 

Dancing across the windswept meads of heav- 
en 

[68] 



Has filled the sky with lovely, silver blossoms, 

Stars shaken from the solemn trees of God. 
Shell-craters, rimmed with wind-flowers, glim- 
mer far 

And violet-girdled trenches melt to shadows, 
And all the gloom grows mystical with stars; 

Deep in the west a crescent moon, a jewel 
Tremulous, glows on Day's departing brow — 

A crescent moon, and in her arms enfolded 
The semblance of her dear, dead mother-moon; 

Lo, God is whispering to us through the 
stars — 
Whispering us the secret of His Love: 

Eternal Beauty wounding with great passion 
And exultation the dumb hearts of men! 

April and Peace! 
Ah, once again shall Beauty 

Thrill mortal hearts with ecstasy and song. 



[69] 



SONG IN DEJECTION 

Oh, life is only a fever of dreams 

And death a slumber sweet and deep 
And God a foolish Shadow-king. 

We sow, we labor, and we reap — 
And as we reap, we bend and sing 

Praising the foolish Shadow-king 
Whose realms of starshine pulse and ring 

With song and laughter: Shadow-play 
Is this our life — the Shadow-play 

Of children of a Shadow-king. 



[70] 



THE SHIPS OF NIGHT 

The ships of night are waiting for my soul; 

Tall galleons with dusk-filled sails they lie 
Moored in the twilight by the shore of dreams; 

My shattered hopes and unfulfilled desires, 
And all my broken words and unsung songs 

Throng the dim decks — Oh, I shall go to them 
And cut the ropes that bind me to my past 

And sail the silent seas of Death alone. 



[71] 



FANTASIA 

I got this wisdom from a star 

And keep it ever in my heart ; 
And though my way be lone and far, 

And though I see my friends depart 
Along the vistas of dead days, 

This little wisdom sheds its rays 
Over my night; 

From its pure light 
I learn that man is but a part 

Of some great Scheme, and cannot be 
More than a wave in a vast sea 

That swells up from the deep and dies 
In a white foam of memories. 



\7A 



WINTER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE 
"Fasnacloich" 

Illimitable storms of winter weigh 

With living crystals the gaunt, leafless trees; 
Monadnock looms in purple majesty 

Above the cloudy tumult of the hills ; 
A sudden shaft of winter sunlight flames 

Across the mountain's summit, and it glows 
Like an imperious jewel on the brow 

Of some old god whom poverty of prayer 
And long neglect have left to slow decay; 

So from the very sorrow of the year, 
Tortured and reft by winter's savagery, 

Nature with proud triumphant eyes aflame 
And with a song of gladness on her lips 

Mocks the small vanities that trouble men: 
Apocalyptic visions, empty dreams, 

Impossible, high hopes of worlds to be. 
Turn thou to Nature! Look within her heart 

And learn the wisdom of her inmost soul; 
Her laughter in the meadows and her tears 

Dew-scattered on the petals of the rose: 
Her irony in the cold, wandering stars 

And her mute sadness in the waning moon: 
Her pulse in the eternal tides: her calm 

In the far beauty of the thyme-sweet hills . . . 
Oh ye who toil in cities making hells 

Of living desolation — ye who sweat 

[73] 



That Property may rule the human heart 

And break the large, free spirit of mankind, 
Seek in the heart of Nature where all Truth, 
Where Force and Love and Beauty dwell, and 
where 
Burns the white flame of man's eternity. 

February, 1919. 



[74] 



FIRST VIOLETS 

The twilight-haunted pools of evening gleam 

With broken images of stars; 
The lonely snows of lingering winter dream 

In the deep, brooding dusk — the hungry stream 
Of night sweeps down and with its shadow mars 

The twilit beauty of the pregnant earth 
Soon to give birth 

To Spring and all the pageantry of Spring. 
Veiled in the dusk-enfolding covering 

Of muffled darkness, the dumb mouth of Death 
Breathes silent kisses on the earth's warm breast ; 

And yet untroubled by Death's numbing breath 
Violets waken from their winter rest 

And lift their faces to the frosty stars. 



175] 



BLUE-BIRDS 

With rush of blue-birds in the windy dawn 

And swelling, surging bursts of melody, 
Spring dances down across the sleepy hills 

And brings to meadows mute with mystery 
Wind-flowers, hyacinths, and daffodils — 

Spring dancing, laughing with the happy 
Dawn! 
Oh blue-birds, blue-birds lifting voices wild 

With pain of love to greet the morning, bear 
My heart a gift to the eternal child 

Of Winter, Spring with sunlight in her hair: — 
Take her my heart and all the songs I sing 

Oh happy blue-bird legions of the Spring! 



[76] 



APRIL SONG 

Oh, April art thou come again 

With all the panoply of Spring? 
And wilt thou touch to life again 

Our hearts, and make them sing? 

Ploughed by the ploughshare of War's pain 
And sown with Sorrow's seed, the clod 

Within man's heart shall bloom again 
Tilled by the hand of God. 

Far, golden meadows, deep with grain, 

Shall mock War's splendor, and His hand, 

Who lit the stars, unbar again 
The happy gates of Faery-land. 

Oh April, thou art come again 
Into our fettered hearts to prove 

That Death and all his dusky train 
Are but the fools of Love. 



[77] 



THE REED 

Mute by the lapping water's edge 

Among the fragile iris bloom, 
Where winds come dreaming through the sedge 

And willows weave a silver gloom, 
A slender reed grew wistfully . . . 

Until one day a child passed by 
And broke the reed and went away . . . 

But when the dew- fringed robe of day 
Fell from the sky, and star on star 

Melted into the blue, washed grey 
With twilight, Pan came from afar 

And plucked the broken reed and played 
A strange, strange melody that made 

Even the stream's chill heart afraid. 

Long, long ago a poet dreamed 

His lonely dreams, until a child, 
A child with elfin eyes that seemed 

To mirror all the sweet and wild 
Disturbing passion of the sea 

Passed by, and broke the poet's heart . . . 
And yet today the poet sings 

A simpler, lovelier melody, 
Though shattered all his poet's art, 

For Beauty gave his spirit wings. 



[78] 



A LARK SINGS 

With long, slim fingers 

The swift wind 
Has ruffled the grey tresses of the river; 

Over the billowy, green meadow lingers 
The fluting of a mocking-bird, and blind 

Low clouds have veiled the laughter of the sky 
And darkened all the east as with a frown; 

Then, soft across the distant furrows brown 
With promise of fulfillment, comes a quiver 

Of passionate melody, 
Where some bird lover, 

Singing among the fragrant tufts of clover, 
Chants Love's old riddle to the fields and sky. 



[79] 



AN ELEGY OF SPRING 

The lips of Dawn among the leaves 

Lisped the low poem of Day; 
And the tall poplars trembling grey 

Against the pallor of the stars 
Were tipped with flame, blue-gold; 

The threshold of the west gleamed white 
Under the swarthy feet of Night, 

And the gaunt moon glowed cold. . . . 
'Twas then I heard her laughing from the hills, 

The dark hills of the north ; 
Came on the wind a breath of daffodils, 

The fragrance of her tresses — she was fled — 
Proud, barefoot Spring, seeking the long dark 
hills 

That fringe the wind-tossed meadows of the 
north. 
She left the Summer all her wealth of flowers 

And all the singing passion of her hours, 
And strewing blossoms as she passed, Spring fled. 

But shall we mourn her in a time of roses? 
And mourn her when the happy flowers throng 
The lap of Summer, Summer who discloses 

To every poet his song? 
Ah, no! I turned to greet the Dawn, and after 

The east flushed crimson at the touch of Day, 
I heard from the far, northern hills her laughter 

And glimpsed her eyes, blue-grey. 

[80] 



MY PEAR TREE 

A tiny pear tree in my garden grows, 

A kindly little tree, quiet and grave; 
A friendly neighbor to the proud red rose, 

Casting betimes a welcome patch of shade 
To screen her beauty — yet to none a slave, 

To none a master; calm and undismayed 
Through the long heat of summer — glad to give 

A few most fragrant pears to me, and glad 
To share the garden's loveliness, and live 

Free and untrammeled in the garden-close; 
A happy-hearted little tree, yet sad 

When Autumn's fingers paint its green leaves 
gold 
And the wind steals them — when the glad-lipped 
rose 

Withers away and the warm grass grows cold, 
And Winter fills the garden with chill snows; 

Yet joyful when Spring comes again and 
weaves 
Over its nakedness a shift of leaves. 



[8iJ 



JUDAS-TREE 

Then shuddering he flung the silver down. . . . 

"Betrayed Him with a kiss!" — Shaken with 
sobs, 
Fierce sobs of anguish, Judas rushed away 

Into the night to hang himself, alone, 
Crying with madness, broken, jealous, blind; 

His sobbing rent the pitying heart of Night . . . 
Until with one long strangled cry of pain 

He died, the traitor, Judas, the false friend. 

Over dewy meadows fair with flowers, 

Out of the pillared portals of the Dawn, 
Came One with a grave beauty in His eyes 

And kissed the shrivelled lips of Judas — low 
His words were, low and swift with love: 

"Friend, I forgive you." 
At His voice there sprang 

Dark purple blossoms, bleeding flowers of pain, 
Out of the blood of that bewildered heart, 

The heart of him who in his madness sold 
His dearest friend for silver ! Ah, and so 

When Easter lilies laugh to greet the Dawn 
And resurrection brings us life again 

And love and beauty, purple flowers of pain 
Bloom on the tree of Judas, passionate-dark 

Penitent flowers of pain . . . 



[82: 



SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1919 

As when Saint Francis walked the ways of earth 
And preached the simple beauty of God's 
word, 
Angel of Love to man and flower and bird 

Alike, so to the long, self-fostered dearth 
Within my spirit, from your soul to mine, 

As the cool greenness in the heart of rain 
Quenches the thirst of meadows parched with 
pain, 
Came on strong wings of faith a breath divine. 
Pilgrim of Beauty, I who sought alone 

In the chill hearts of stars, and found not 
grace, 
Knew at your word that I could still atone — 
Beheld through crumbling mists of right and 
wrong, 
Lifted before the Silence of His face, 
The Grail of Beauty and the Wine of Song. 



[83] 



AN AUTUMN GARDEN 

A riot of asters and wine-dark leaves, 
The garden dreams away the days, 

And all the patterns Summer weaves 
Across the grassy paths and ways 

Grow richer and darker with Autumn's dyes- 
Colors that lend a deeper stain 

To Summer's tinted traceries — 
Colors that bring a sense of pain 

To hearts that feel the weight of years 
And know that life is only tears — 

And laughter; yet who fail to see 
In Autumn's touch life's unity. 



[8 4 ] 



THE LAST ROSE 

This last dew-scented rose that lifts its face 

To greet the sun 
With sleepy petals pouting for a kiss — 

This hungry-hearted child of Summer, this 
Her youngest and her fairest flower to grace 

With perfumed passion Autumn's early days, 
Is the last pledge of Summer's motherhood — 

The last great crimson drop of her heart's 
blood 
To stain with beauty the fast-fading grass — 

Or is it wine spilled from Youth's shattered 
glass ? 
Or Love's last lingering laugh made visible 

Among the tawny blades of autumn grass 
To mock my fleeting shadow as I pass? 



[85] 



AUTUMN, A RHAPSODY 

Autumn's fingers are stained 

With the blood of wounded leaves; 
She reels across the world, 

Her sunburnt body glowing 
Through tattered raiment 

Of flaming gold; 
Laughing she lures her lover Winter. 

Shaken and pale with wind-reft passion, 
He tears her fluttering garments, 

Tears her tawny hair. 
Soon he will enfold her 

In a white embrace of snows — 
Will clasp her lithe brown body, 

Will clothe her with desire, 
And crown her wild, sweet loveliness 

With rainbow-glinting crystals. 
Wind-passioned, he will woo her 

With a savage tenderness — 
And of Autumn's sacrifice 

Is born another year. 



[86] 



AUTUMNAL 

The wearied songs of crickets thrill the night 

With a lorn music, tremulous and far; 
Over the oak-trees blinks a lazy light, 

A sleepy star; 
And half a moon swings low above the trees 

Drowsed by the crickets' plaintive melodies. 
And also in my heart a waning moon 

Drifts, and I know that summer's days are fled 
Even as the swallows, and all the flowers are 
dead; 

Winter's pale feet will cross the meadows soon 
And leave a wake of silver like the moon. 



[87] 



LAMENT 

The ivy dyes the marble dark 

With autumn's heavy, crimson stain 
Across the smooth, pale stone a mark 

Of pain ; 
The ruthless gusts of autumn rain 

Scatter the asters on the grass 
Among the fallen leaves — alas 

That lovely summer should be slain 

So soon, so soon. 



[88] 



LATE MOON 

Lifted in sacramental calm 

Above a lonely leafless tree 
The white moon dreams . . . 

Around her gleams 
A halo of pale clouds — 

She seems 
Contemptuous of you and me 

In her remote security. 



[89] 



WILD GEESE 

With hollow cries that shake the mists of autumn 

Clinging like ghostly leaves to the dead trees, 
Over the pale, frost-girdled fields and marshes — 

With lonely cries, their pulsing wings fast- 
cleaving 
The trembling azure of the autumn dawn 

A flock of wild geese seek the windy ocean, 
Southwards, forever southwards winging on — 

There where the old moon drifts, a sorry 
emblem 
Of days forgotten and of faith foresworn, 

They fade away — shadows on the horizon — 
Dark frowns upon the silver brow of morning — 

Mute prophecies of winters to be born. 



[90] 



ALL SOULS' EVE 

The shadows gather; it is All Souls' Eve; 

The rain is spent 
And the dumb, falling leaves 

Plead with mute pity as they drift and cling 
To the sere, withered grass. 

Tis All Souls' Eve ! 
The spirits of departed friends seem near 

In the fast- falling twilight — like a dream 
The mantle of the night muffles the world — 

And hearts grown weary from the stress of 
life 
Seek in the dark forgetfulness and peace. 

The touch of Death, 
The swift, inscrutable 

Breath of Oblivion, how kind it is 
To wearied mortals ! 

Now, on All Souls' Eve, Death's enigmatic 
eyes 
Lift for a space their cold obscurity 

And in their passion-haunted depths man reads 
The legend of the unborn years 

Beyond to-morrow's dawn. 
Lo, at this magic time 

The kiss of Death is on Life's laughing lips, 
For on this evening Love has made them one. 



[91] 



ON WATCH 

(Written at a Naval Training Station) 

The fretful leaves in restless eddies swirl 

And gambol in the gutters with the wind; 
The dying moon glints hard against the stars, 

Blue jewels in the mantle of the sky; 
The icy fingers of the winter wind 

Caress to numbness all my limbs; 
My thoughts in senseless eddies like the leaves 

Rustle their foolish music in my brain . . . 
"Two hours more to watch!" — The shuddering 
trees 

Reaching fantastic arms among the stars 
Mutter with pain, "Two hours more to watch — 

Two hours more before the frost-pale dawn." 



[92] 



STOCKBRIDGE 

Only moon-misted mountains, sleeping meadows, 

The mirrored stars in the quiet river's heart, 
And this old house dreaming among its trees — 

A solemn beauty, still and sacramental, 
Silvers the shadows with the moon's pale frost 

Of faery splendor — and this old house dream- 
ing 
Until the Dawn with spectral fingers loosens 

Day's golden hair across the moon-blanched 
hills, 
Smiles in the silence, for its deep heart shelters 

All that it loves and all it holds most dear. 



[93] 



NOVEMBER WIND 

The proud-lipped wind with mockery of rain 
Has flung his challenge to the naked fields; 

In vain they veil with pearly mists 

Their withered loveliness — in vain . . . 

With laughter he has torn away 
The summer that was yesterday. 



[94] 



WRITTEN DURING THE PARADE OF 
THE FIRST DIVISION, NEW YORK CITY 

Sensed in the acclamation of the crowd 

And in the fierce, impatient tread of feet 
Against the fettered earth, the incomplete 

Brief breath of Beauty pierces the dense shroud 
That folds about me as a darkling cloud 

Enwreathes the horns of the uplifted moon; 
Victory's visage veils untold defeat 

And Beauty has withheld the spirit's boon. 
So, as I stand above the multitude 

And cry my Ave to the passing throng, 
It seems that through the shouting and the rude 

Acclaim of many tongues, there comes the long 
Far cry of Beauty — the sensed solitude 

Of poets round the battlements of Song. 



[95] 



ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL 

Oh, ye who in your youth's unsullied splendor 

Through the fleet-footed hours bear your trust 
Unvanquished, till the final, dark surrender 

When you enrich Death's dumb, indifferent dust 
With the spent passion of your clear endeavor 

To grasp and to attain eternal truth, 
Though steep the heights of your achievement, 
never, 

Never forget the heart that fired your youth! 
Time may efface the past and in the skies 

Promise to mend a thousand present ills ; 
But we who falter, deeming only wise 

The old, deny the source of our desire : 
The benediction of a Gothic spire 

And the mute blessing of New Hampshire hills. 

October, 1919. 



[96] 



TO A FRIEND WITH SOME VERSES 

When Spring has touched the hills of Thessaly 

And Summer's argosy with leafy sails 
Bears down the southwest wind whose azure flails 

Lash into angry foam the Aegean Sea, 
Then in my visions of an Arcady 

Long wasted by the years, in dreams I bring 
To Hermes' temple — I, his votary, 

The withered poppies of my gathering. 
Friend in whose soul the sea's hushed murmuring 

Upbuilds the perfect poem of its heart 
Pleading in music lovelier than art, 

I bring you but the momentary gleams 
Of Beauty that is ever on the wing — 

Child of the Sea, scorn not my slender dreams. 



[97] 



TO THE SAME FRIEND 

You who are one with the eternal sea, 

Within whose heart the ghost of her far song 
Reverberates — murmurous music strong 

With the grim passion of her harmony, 
Together we have climbed the wind-reft steeps 

Of poetry — together we have heard 
The call of Beauty where enfolded sleeps 

Eternity within one little word. 
As Hermes, shadowy evangelist, 

Walked among mortals, so to me you came, 
Fleet of foot with glad friendship that could claim 

The measured pulse of Time's sidereal wings — 
It seemed you came to an appointed tryst 

Bringing me earnest of eternal things. 



[98] 



TO ONE WHO IS A VOICE 

Only a voice — the wind among the leaves 

Shivered — a wistful, haunting melody 
Under the lilacs where great drops of dew 

Mirrored the pale, star-dusty evening sky; 
Was it the wind? Or was it only you, 

Dear distant friend, calling me from afar 
Through the long leagues of dusk, remote and 
blue? 

Or was it just a star? 



[99] 



HARBOUR COURT 

Here where the final leaves of Summer sleep 

Under the benediction of those boughs 
Whose suppliant and aspiring branches keep 

The secret of shy April's nuptial vows — 
Here where the old sea dreams along the shore, 

Since grey-eyed Autumn laid aside her lute, 
Our hearts have hallowed and enshrined once 
more 

A friendship in whose presence love is mute. 
Look where the Dawn has silvered all with mist 

And tipped the stark December trees with 
gold! 
Has she forgotten her appointed tryst, 

Though she be sad and her Tithonus old? 
Oh, though the sunlight of our day depart, 

Your love is graven in my heart of heart. 



[100] 



TO A POET 

Autumn, a dark Medea, in her flight 

Strewed the blood-dabbled foliage of the year, 
Fugitive from the swift-pursuing night 

Of Winter, whose grim, windy legions jeer 
And chide the solemn passing of the world, 

The bright, leaf-scattered ways where Autumn 
trod 
Gold as the gleaming wings of angels furled 

At dusk about the citadel of God. 
So these fleet pages, poetry-scattered songs, 

Sweep through my spirit as the Autumn's 
breath 
Sweeps singing through the tree-tops with glad 
throngs 

Of leaves that kindle to dull flame the gloom: 
Your singing sunders the dumb dream of Death 

And thrills with melody the voiceless tomb. 



[101 



ON RETURNING 

You, in the joyance of your youth returning 
To tread again the un forgotten ways, 

Found in your heart the past's chill ashes burning 
With the fleet friendship of remembered days. 

And I, who with you up the pathway wending 
Paused for a moment at my childhood's grave, 

Could only marvel at your lavish spending 
And bless the beauty that your friendship gave. 



[102] 



IMPERFECTION 

It seemed that you were but a grey-eyed lad 

And wistful in your life's fleet transiency, 
Uncomprehended angel ! He could see 

Only the simple virtue that you had — 
And though he marvelled not, he could be glad 

At your so subtly wise simplicity — - 
Not apprehending in your amity 

The beauty that would make his spirit sad. 
Your pilgrim heart was swift to sense defeat 

In his misunderstanding, though his love 
Was ultimate and in itself complete; 

Yet was there coldness in your clear grey eyes, 
And sorrow, for you saw that he but strove 

To bind you to love's inconsistencies. 



[103] 



COULD I BUT FIND 

Could I but find in you the child that was — 

The grey-eyed, elfin lad with wistful ways 
And simple love for all of life, because 

He did not know the shadow-haunted days 
Of men who sell the sunlight — could I find 

That loved, lamented beauty — could the trust 
I had in you be caught again, refined 

And tempered clean of Time's corroding rust — 
Then would sheer rapture of achievement wing 

My heart with pinions of diviner song, 
And I should rise above the suffering 

Of present loss and disappointment, strong 
With untried strength — and, oh, the songs I'd sing 

To flaunt love's triumph and to prove men 
wrong ! 



[104] 



STARS 

The dream-flowers in thy heart of clay, 

Frail blossoms of eternal fire, 
Are children of some larger day, 

Star-flames of infinite desire. 

The breath of Beauty stirs within thy soul ; 

Oh turn thee from life's sordid prison-bars ! 
Within thy heart God's hand has set a whole 

White armament of stars. 

Over the waters of thy spirit glide 

The silent ships of Truth; 
Oh turn thee from the lonely paths of pride, 

And seek eternal youth. 

The dream-flowers in thy heart of clay 
Shall flame for thee as Beauty's mark — 

Tapers to light thee on thy way 
Out of the dark. 



[105] 



ICARIAN 

i. 

I sought to give you wings that you might soar 

On sheer dream-pinions over the dark sea 
That folds its solemn waters round the shore 

Of Life's beginnings, when the Year, grown 
hoar, 
And chill at heart, nursed infant Memory, 

And sighed the autumn of her days that we, 
Having been young, should now be young no 
more, 

Until another Spring's Epiphany. 
Icarus- winged, you fell — but not to die — 

And swam the waters dark with mystery 
Of strife and anguish, and the tempered urge 

Of a new purpose strengthened you to be 
Clear-visioned as the winds whose winnowing 
scourge 

Ruffles the waves of the Icarian Sea. 



[106] 



II. 

If I have failed you, it was as a dream 

That melts beneath the Dawn's warm-fingered 
touch 
And leaves the dreamer troubled, inasmuch 

As I so loved you that I sought to prove 
The stark impossibilities of love 

Eternal, all-enduring! It would seem 
That I am vanquished — vanquished though I be, 

Still I protest my love's fidelity. 
Failure will garner lilies of my heart 

Instead of poppies — she will bind my brows 
With hope- frail lilies and not laurel boughs, 

Where in the courts of Beauty, mute, apart, 
I worship, silent, at her hallowed fane 

And offer flowers gathered from your pain. 



[107] 



III. 
Beauty has claimed me — I must follow after 

Her lonely footsteps through the dust and 
dew — 
Through vales of tears and over hills of laughter, 

Bearing within my heart the thought of you — 
Whether I lose me in the moon's white wonder, 

A poet's wilderness, or in the blue 
Still hills of dream, no hand can mar or sunder 

The unsung music of my love for you ; — 
Icarus fell — and, falling, died, — you, falling, 

Found deeper, larger life, and found the goal 
I strove to show you — found the spirit's wonder, 

The heart of day pulsing through midnight's 
thunder — 
And now at dawn, clear-voiced about you calling, 

I hear the starry angels of your soul. 



108] 



AT PARTING 

If you have come with unaccustomed feet 

To tread the gardens of my heart and found 
The way less lovely, and have sensed defeat 

In the great hush of daisies which the browned 
And fruitful meadows of my heart puts forth, 

Glad with the infelicity of Spring, 
When all importunate she seeks the North 

To pleasure in her beauty's blossoming — 
If you have come and found the sunlight cold 

Along the borders and the leaves grown sere, 
Pause and remember, ere the last leaves fold 

Their frail-veined beauty in the dust, for here 
Our love was hallowed when the foolish Year 

Mocked us with sunlight that you thought was 
gold. 



109] 



TO AUGUSTA 

Tawny the marshes and the meadows umber 

That skirt the russet hills whereon the wind 
Rocks the sere leaves in their Autumnal slumber 

Until the sound of Winter's onslaught, dinned 
And echoed by the rout of Autumn ceases, 

And the mysterious hush of coming snow 
Smoothes from the wrinkled brow of Earth 
care's creases 

And dims in Heaven the starry tapers' glow. 
But you, dear sister, in whose eyes is treasured 

The memory of beauty that is ours 
No less to-day than in the past, have measured 

And apprehended all my love's surmise 
To meet the present need of present hours, 

And in love's wisdom I have found you wise. 



[no] 



TO AUGUSTA ON HER BIRTHDAY 

It may be that the morning stars 

Which on the night's keen edge do gleam, 
Distort with their dawn-shadowed scars 

The mirrored image of my dream. 

It may be that the wheel of day 

Will grind into the quiet dust 
The flower that was yesterday 

My love and trust. 

It may be, when the healing dark 

Of the last sleep shall lap me round, 

That Death will smooth away the mark 
Where ancient sorrow frowned. 

In that prophetic, midnight hour 

It may be Time will tear away 
My dreams — even to the merest flower — 

And there be no more day. 

And yet I doubt me if the night, 
Though it be moonless, can obscure 

Your love, a certitude of light 
That shall endure. 



[in] 



TO UNDINE 

My dreams have crumbled into dust 
And over them the daisies grow ; 

All love and beauty, fear and lust, 
Passions that scorched my spirit so — 

Unlovely, lovely — just, unjust — 
Buried long ago. 

And yet you came and bent above 
My daisies, and you gathered them, 

Frail flowers born of other love, 
And wove a starry diadem, 

And as I watched the wreath you wove, 
It seemed you sang Love's requiem. 

Oh, keep the wreath that you have made, 
Dear little friend, for it may prove 

As one by one its daisies fade 
The lorn mortality of Love. 



[112] 



TO TWO SISTERS 

Grey as the shadows of dawn and as dew from 
furtive flowers, 
Sweet as the wind's clear song is sweet and 
wild, 
God gathered all the beauty of the winged- footed 
hours 
Into the grey eyes of a little child. 

He wove a woof of laughter from the sun 
To clothe a sister heart — and grey eyes too — 

That she might be as was this other one, 
Ethereal as dew. 

He gave them feet as swift as silver stars — 
He gave them wings to lift their feet when 
tired — 

Infinite wings of dream no iron bars 

Can bind or fetter — and when Day aspired 

To quench with fiery kisses the mute moon, 
God brimmed their hearts with sunlight ! And 
a rune 

Of roses and of lilies with His hand 

He wrote across their foreheads — as the sea 

Etches pale poems upon the crumbling sand, 
The long-lisped utterance of ecstasy. 

[113] 



Upon their laughing lips the song of day 

Rang far — their laughter took me back again 
To realms of childhood — and their eyes, dew- 
grey, 
Lifted my heart above the gates of Pain — 
For, lo, they bore me on their childhood's wings 
To dreams where children, and not men, are 
kings. 



[»4] 



CHRISTINA 

Pale Oread with the moon-kissed hair, 

Wind-fostered lily from the hills 
Whose feet are swift as daffodils 

That laugh to greet the lilting Spring, 
The dusk-blue magic of your eyes 

Has thrilled my heart with memories 
Where through tall birches, gaunt and bare, 

When Autumn shook their leafy hair 
Across the dawn-flushed mountain snow, 

I heard a faery-maiden sing 
Till dark November turned to Spring 

And all the leafless woodland rang 
With melody, for as she sang 

She woke a dream of long ago . . . 
So when you look at me, it seems 

You are that faery of my dreams. 



[US] 



TO LAURA LOUISE 

Oh little faery of the yellow sands, 

What secret of the sea is in your eyes? 

What music, that you stretch your little hands 
Laughing to hear the sea's far melodies ? 

For in your eyes the sea has sung a song 
And poured the haunting magic of its blue. 

Oh teach me in your childishness the song 
It made for you. 



[1x6] 



MIDNIGHT 

What was it smote within the muffled pealing 

Of those prophetic, sullen midnight chimes, 
When the scarce moonlight wavered on the 
ceiling, 
And you and I remembered other times? 
For at the echo of the last beat, broken 

Between a sob and laughter, you grew still 
And in your eyes love's promise died unspoken, 

As April's touch upon a daffodil — 
Only our hearts throbbed on, and in their 
throbbing 
Recognizant, abiding, love was mute — 
While Night against the sightless windows 
sobbing 
Strummed with vain hands upon her star- 
strung lute 
And sleep stole on us with his hours, robbing 
Our hearts of any power to refute. 



["7] 



MY FRIEND 

To-day, a welter of futility, 

Marks the slow sinking of the spirit's sun; 
Alien, apart, men stumble — and the tongue 

That once gave voice to golden melody 
Is mute, or garrulous with gutter-songs. 

The dull solemnity of Time's bell tolls, 
Mocking the poor in spirit, vanquished throngs 

That hoard the separate solace of their souls. 
Against the shuttered windows of my heart 

He knocked and asked me shelter, and I gave 
Of my so meagre hospitality; 

He had in the poor present world no part, 
And yet he came not from the voiceless grave 

Nor sought an unprevisioned Sicily. 



[118] 



HIS FRIENDSHIP 

Communion such as friendship brings, 

Mute music of the human heart, 
Awakes within my spirit wings; 

Calling from dim remembered springs 
Veiled in the mist of memory, 

Echoes within my spirit start 
And break in waves of melody; — 

Gradual music in my heart, 
Hushed rhythm of Love's harmony. 



[119] 



THE QUEST 

I sought you in the falling of the leaves, 

The sunny shadows of the falling leaves — 
I sought you in the ebbing of the year 

Among the leaves of autumn, golden, sere 
And bleeding leaves wounded by Autumn's hands ; 

Again I sought you by the foaming sea 
Along illimitable, lonely sands . . . 

Oft in the lavish legacy of Day 
I sought you, and the swarthy feet of Night 

Pursued me, shadowy and far away — 
The pale moon girdled with eternal light 

Hunted me with her yelping pack of stars — 
The waving plumes of Dawn and all her host, 

The vast, triumphant panoply of Day, 
Guided me from the pathless wastes of night. 

And still I sought you, and your mocking ghost 
Fled me among the hungry frosts of Death. 

Ever I sought you; 
And when winter's breath 

Breathed desolation on the happy fields 
And shook the last leaves from the shivering 
trees, 

My heart grew numb — only a sense of pain, 
Of hope deferred, taunted me, 

Haunted me . . . 
And yet I sought you, sought you once again 

Over the windy meadows dumb with snow . . . 

[120] 



I thought to find you never, when at last 

I found you — the brief pressure of your hand — 
The deep, clear light of friendship in your eyes — 

And all the waves of darkness, troubled, vast, 
Large-sounding waters moaning on the sand 

Of my dead days, ebbed — and the mysteries 
Of this your simple friendship thrilled me through 

With all the tender lovingness of you. 



[121] 



JANUARY 23d, 1919 

Stars trembled on the margin of the day 

And danced along the ebbing tides of night ; 
The old imperious moon still lingered white 

Above the bare, fantastic winter trees; 
The long slow waves of day broke into light 

Over the eastern ramparts of the world, 
And a soft foam of pearl-gray clouds o'erspread 

The lonely sky — then in my soul I sought 
And found, beyond the living and the dead, 

Deeper than passion is or mortal thought, 
The dark flame of your spirit, oh my friend ! 

In the clear eyes of Dawn I read 
The poem of another's heart 

Veiled in his friendship's mystery. 
And now, whate'er Time's passing brings 

Of grief or love or joy or pain, 
I'll bear within my spirit wings 

To lift me from the little things 
Of life, to take me back again 

To hours of friendship such as we 
Have stolen from eternity. 
Though Death may fill my heart with gloom 

And sorrow shroud my soul, yet I 
Shall rise above my old self's tomb 

Out of the dust of memory. 

[122] 



Proud, laughing melodies shall thrill 

My resurrected spirit through 
With flames of love eternal, till 

Beating against the boundless blue 
Of heaven, my soul shall fall and find 

Your eyes, deep infinite and kind, 
The wistful tenderness of you 

Forever near me, oh my friend. 



[123] 



AT DAYBREAK 

I saw the dawn grow wistful in your face 
Watching you slumber in the dove-grey gloom, 

And saw the first, faint sunbeams, quivering, trace 
Each dark, familiar object of your room. 

And Day bound on her sandals and arose 

And trod the valleys where the hushed hills 
bend, 

Gaunt spectres, in whose solitudes repose 
The secrets of our friendship, oh my friend. 



124] 



OTHERS HAVE GIVEN MORE 

Others have given more — but in your giving 

There was a splendor and a sacrifice ; 
You in the sorry loneliness of living 

Wrought of his devious ways your love's 
device ; 
And it was meet that in your alien keeping 

His heart should rest and find divine surcease, 
As when the pitying night with starry weeping 

Folds the long valleys in her sheltering peace. 
Others have given more — but you, befriending 

One who was fugitive of mortal ways, 
Brought to his solitude immediate ending 

And filled with beauty his slow-shambling days, 
As hill-girt rivers from the hills descending 

Trouble the deeps of the eternal bays. 



[125] 



SUNSET 

Over the fields a fading beauty lingers, 

The golden wake of day; 
And through my hair the wind's caressing fingers 

In gentle passion stray. 

Through the long solitude of evening calling 

The night-wind lisps your name; 
And in the gloom are voiceful shadows falling, 

Shadows of dusky flame. 

Friend of my heart, I sense you in the embers 

Of the fast-fading day; 
And lovingly my heart again remembers 

You who are far away. 



126J 



TO ONE LONG SILENT 

The dusk within my clover-scented garden 
Veils with a gradual beauty all the flowers; 

And Night's mute lips breathe on my forehead 
pardon 
For the day's wasted hours. 

And through the twilight the tall poplars bending, 
Whisper, it almost seems your name, dear 
friend — 

Oh when shall this long silence have an ending? 
For all things have an end. 

Silence — and on the shadowy, pale roses, 
Warm with the lingering fragrance of the day, 

Night breathes a kiss, and with her ringers closes 
The blossoms where they sway. 

Yet in my garden blooms without your knowing, 
Silvery with untrodden stars of dew, 

A little flower at whose heart lies glowing 
The memory of you. 



[127] 



ALWAYS THE SUNSET 

Always the sunset — shall we always see 

The rich Day spend his bounty and depart 
And Evening tear with blue-veined hands the 
heart 

Of her false lover whose inconstancy 
Stabs with deliberate, starry poignards through 

Her sheltering beauty, and the afterglow 
Breathe benediction sorrowful and low, 

And Night distil her chalices of dew? 
Always the sunset — Listen to the croon 

Of summer-hearted crickets in the grass; 
Their song is one of love and death and birth, 

Knowing that where Tomorrow's feet must 
pass, 
New days shall blossom and another Earth 

Yearn with her tides to reach another Moon. 



[128] 



TO YOU 

I saw you once with sunset in your eyes 

And after sunset saw the twilight glow 
With star on star within your heart, and slow 

Vast waves of love within my spirit broke, 
For you were near me, and the words you spoke 

Were as the touch of vanished memories ; 
And all my heart, a tremulous blue smoke, 

Burned at your feet in silent sacrifice. 
Oh you within whose eyes the sunset died, 

Whose heart grew wistful with a wealth of 
stars, 
Whose feet were swift with love — the years may 
bring 

You other love than mine, and other pride, 
And other beauty, yet the songs I sing 

Have brought you love that shall outlive the 
stars. 



[129] 



LOVE'S TRIUMPH 

Continuous grey storms of wind and rain 

Made cruel laughter through the leaf-strewn 

air 

And stripped the branches of our friendship bare, 

Covering all with dark-winged mists of pain . . . 

Veiled in the gradual gloom of dawn it stands, 

Emblem of this our love, a tall, gaunt pine, 
And lifts new strength to touch the stars which 
shine 
Ghostly against the growing light — no hands 
Have marred this Beauty which is yours and 
mine. 



[130] 



PROMISE 

There will be jonquils where the snow now lies, 

Anemones and violets, and sprays 
Of rathe arbutus ; and the tell-tale days, 

Companioning the fleet Spring's truancies, 
Will hound detested Winter from the skies; 

Love from the lips of leaves will celebrate 
April's betrothal; and the birds amaze 

Melodiously earth regenerate. 
True — but the proud, glad Spring shall soon 
decline : 

Summer reiterate her cricket-songs: 
Autumn's exalted flattery malign 

Spring's all-apparent promises: the wrongs 
That earth has suffered once again return . . . 

Yet shall Love's promontoried watch-fires 
burn. 



[131 



THE ANSWER 

The dust the wind has scattered, where, oh, 

where 

Shall it find solace? And the seed once furled 

And sheathed in darkness, shall the sentient air 

Return it to the dust? Shall the round world, 

Wearied of its exacting orbit, turn 

And search the blazing heavens, as it were 
Inquisitive to know why systems burn 

Their foolish stars, or if the moon's wings 
whir ? 
Ask of the wind whose passing scattereth 

The dust — aye, and the crumbling constella- 
tions too — 
Perchance the lips of that grey Sphinx called 
Death 
Will stir with laughter Night's untroubled 
blue; 
Or the swift song of her eventful breath 

Startle your searching heart . . . and answer 
you. 



132] 



BEAUTY 

As flowers within the grey heart of the rain 

Breathe promise of new fragrance — as the 
Day, 
A hushed, mute shadow at the breast of Night 

Lies suckled — so beneath despair and pain, 
Hedged with the stress of life, and overlain 

With sorrow, triviality, dismay, 
The root of Beauty strives to reach the light 

And puts forth leafy branches in the soul; 
Man can attain his oneness with the whole 

Of life. Through ultimate Beauty he can be 
Stronger than God or Time or Nature — free 

Through the fierce forging of his spirit's blade 
To conquer self with Self, when he has made 

Beauty his goal — he, Beauty's votary. 



133] 



MY SONG 

I made a song because the sky was blue, 
And sang it to the buttercups, and they 
Laughed through their happy tears of morning 
dew, 
Tears shed at parting when the dawn grew 
grey 
And the stars kissed them — for my heart was 
glad 
Because the grass was green and no one sad, 
And all the sky above my head was blue. 

I sang my song, but only flowers heard; 

And day died and stars rippled through the 
sky; 
Swift wings brushed by me in the dusk, a bird 

Poured forth his throbbing melody, and I 
Was silent as the stars, for then I knew 

He, too, was singing because skies were blue, 
And fretted not that only flowers heard. 



[134] 



REMEMBERED 

Sere, unlamented as a falling leaf, 

The day has breathed its last, its beauty spent 
In lavish compensation for the grief 

That lurks reluctant in the dark intent 
Of the Night's onslaught, until Dawn the thief 

Who plunders all the starry firmament 
And winnows the tall shadows, sheaf on sheaf, 

Pitches on heaven's high hill his windy tent. 
So in the aftermath and afterglow 

That lingers in the day's recessional 
Whose echoes stir the cloistered eventide 

With their autumnal, whispered ritual, 
Love sets the ashes of my dreams aglow 

And I, remembering, am sanctified. 



135] 



TREASURE 

What sequent splendor, oh most wise and true, 

Can dull the simple love that you have given? 
No orient sapphire can outshine the dew 

Of Dawn's apparel — and the waves, moon- 
driven, 
Along the gleaming shoulders of the land, 

Urge after urge, oh they are lovlier far 
Than the frail dust that once was Helen's hand, 

Though both create the beauty that they mar. 
Unreckoned wealth of love is yours and mine, 

Within which knowledge we can rest secure. 
Time may bring drowsy death's dark anodyne, 

Yet shall the tenets of our love endure, 
When at the final Dawn we have kept tryst 

And pilgrim love has proved evangelist. 



136] 



APOLOGIA 

I. 

You said you valued not the lutanist 

Who only sings his songs because he must, 
But rather him whose singing has in trust 

A more portentous matter — yet the tryst 
That every poet keeps is with the dust 

And darkness; — while he lives, the singer's 
crust 
Is meed enough although his lips have kissed 

The feet of Beauty — for the world is just ! 
I know that poets love to plead their case 

Oppressed and trammelled by an alien fate — 
It is their weakness : if you will, disgrace ; 

And yet I charge you to forgive them this ; 
So when you reach the dead you shall not miss 

Their singing, though the Night be long and 
late. 



[137] 



II. 

Blindly we palter — barter, sell and buy 

Achievement even in a little thing; 
The careless days that shuffle by us bring 

Their pain and pleasure, till the sunset sky 
Deepens to darkness and the end — we die 

And have no part in Time's last winnowing 
Of the cold constellations — what we sing 

Is swallowed in the Night's obscurity; 
The friendship you have given me is more 

Than the scant comfort of a thousand songs; 
And all the laboring world and all its wrongs 

Are hushed forever in a little grave ; 
Grant, in forbearance, from your spirit's store 

Some pittance for the friendship that I gave. 



[138] 



III. 

You in the syllables of love once uttered 

Absolved my spirit — I need not atone; 
For in my heart, close-hedged about and shut- 
tered, 

The alien lustre of your fancy shone — 
In your beneficence so all-bestowing, 

Illumined my dull heart with friendship's 
gleams, 
Leaving behind you in your silent going 

A beauty that should haunt my failing dreams. 
And now the winds that gather round November 

To close the chill grey frost-light of her eyes, 
Snuff out the dying day's last paschal ember 

And shroud me in the gloom of winter skies — 
Yet in my loneliness shall I remember 

Your love, and in this memory grow wise. 



[139] 



IV. 
Granted that stars are stars, and after all 

Not slim, aspiring tapers lit by God 
To glimmer down the nave, pontifical, 

Of His high Heaven — and that Beauty's rod 
Be but a pen of science, and the sod 

No grassy glade for faeries — in the end 
Death wraps us in his cold, Lethean pall — 
And you, oh friend of friends, are still my 
friend ! 
Now in the gilded glamour of the year 

When Autumn fleets it down the hills and 
vales, 
And the up-pinioned bulk of Winter sheer 
Above us looms, cloaked in his snow-fringed 
gales, 
We know that life is other than it seems 

And Spring returning shall bring back our 
dreams. 



[140] 



FINIS 

The russet legions of the autumn drifting 

Over the vanquished sword-blades of the grass, 
Rustle their elegies — the trees uplifting 

Their spectral boughs to greet the winds that 
pass 
In mad, exulting tumult through the sky 

Shiver and bend 'neath the swift-girdling 
scythe 
Of Time, whose annual harvesting posts by 

Paying to death its inconsiderate tithe. 
We, who in autumn shutter close our hearts 
And screen our spirits from the gathering 
gloom 
Of voiceless winter, kindle memory's fires 

Which, from the gradual life their warmth 
imparts, 
Awake the mute, remembered dust to bloom 
With the spent beauty of spring's dead desires. 



[hi] 



L'ENVOI 

I wrought a strange device in rhyme 

Of stars and dreams and drops of dew- 

And dipped my pen into the blue 

Of heaven — and on the scroll of Time 

Copied it, word for word, for you. 



[142] 



To dare, whether for failure or achievement, 

And break man's circle of compelling doom, 
Facing the joy of life and life's bereavement 

With certain fortitude — nor chasmed gloom 
Nor alien sunrise fearing — swift to render 

Measure for measure, with unswerving trust 
In Truth to whom alone you made surrender 

Of all you loved in this fleet dream of dust: 
Always was this your single proud endeavor — 

Always your ardor and untiring quest: 
To sift the Truth from life, obeying ever 

The searching kindness of your heart's behest; 
From your dear ashes now no hand can sever 

The love that broods above your final rest. 

Quiet your passing on the mountainside 

With only love and the enduring dark 
About you, and the snow that left no mark 

Of your departure where you turned aside 
And strode with confidence of youth's clean pride 

Into Death's shadows — did you toss your head 
And laugh imperiously, and make the dead 

Suddenly glad to know that you had died? 
Quiet your passing in the hush of hills 

And hallowed by the whispering fall of 
snow, — 
Swift as the April wind whose daffodils 

Gladden Earth's rain- filled pools before they go 
Again into her dark ancestral womb — 

So swift your passing was from tomb to tomb. 

February, 1920. 

[143] 



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